Trados can be extraordinarily useful for translating and editing your documents, but using it can be a little daunting if you don’t have much experience with it. This video will help you get started.

Source: Trados Video Tutorial

This video tutorial in Spanish will provide you with another Multiterm functionality– creating termbases with mdb, xdt and xml files.

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Source: Video sobre Cómo Importar MDB XDT XML en Multiterm

This is a brief tutorial on how to convert an Excel glossary so that you can use it with MultiTerm.

Source: Video Tutorial on Importing Excel Glossaries into Multiterm

Multiterm is one of the most useful translation tools available, and this video will show you how to use it in Microsoft Word.

I found a few jokes for/about translators on a website. Maybe I’ve been at this job too long and they hit too close to home, but some of the jokes didn’t seem too funny to me. They reminded me of some hard times when I had just started out… But there were some others that I’m going to publish here because I liked them quite a bit. I hope that you enjoy them as well, especially as we count down to our “special day,” Translator’s Day.  I’ve included some jokes in English and some jokes in Spanish.

- ¿A qué se dedica?
- Soy traductor.
- ¿En serio? ¡Qué bien! Pero yo le preguntaba cómo se gana la vida.
- ¿Se refiere a trabajar? No trabajo. Gano tanto traduciendo que no necesito trabajar.
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- ¿Podría tenerlo listo en tres días? Me urge mucho.
- Por supuesto.
- ¿Cuánto me costaría?
- 1.500 dólares
- ¿Tanto por tres días de trabajo?
- Si se queda más tranquilo puedo tardar una semana.
—————————-
- ¿Y no podría hacerme un descuento?
- ¿Por qué?
—————————-
- ¡Gana usted más que yo!
- Pues debería plantearse hacerse traductor.
—————————-
- Tenemos un presupuesto mejor. Sepa que hay muchos traductores dispuestos a aceptar el trabajo con una tarifa más sensata.
- Bueno, pues sepa que hay muchos clientes dispuestos a pagar las tarifas que le he dado.
—————————-
- What’s the best price you can offer me?
- X dollars.
- That much for a sheet of paper?
- Ah, my mistake, the paper’s free. It comes with the translation. The price is for putting the words on the paper.
—————————-
- I’m sorry, but we can’t pay you any more than that. We’d be losing money with this project.
- Ok, well call me back when you’ve got a more profitable project.
—————————-

People with little to no experience with a foreign language often assume that the process of translating is just replacing word A (source language) with word B (target language). This is how the most primitive machine translations functioned, subsequently butchering even the simplest of sentences:

Original

I am studying Spanish before I travel to Mexico.

Translation:

Soy estudiando Español antes de Viajo hasta México.

So after thoroughly confusing anyone you’re attempting to communicate with, one begins to realize that there are a LOT of factors that can complicate a translation. Things like verb tenses, phrasal verbs, slang and regionalisms will all throw the simple “find and replace” method out of whack.

The worst part about these mistakes is that they can happen to even seasoned translators after too much work.  So just remember that it’s never as easy as it seems!

Regionalisms are words or phrases that give a language its local color. They are common in one area, while rare, out of place or non-existent in another area. Some English examples of these would be the “lieu vs. bathroom,” “lift vs. elevator,” “ankle biter vs. rug rat,” etc. Native speakers will be familiar with some of these words, but not even the most astute English scholar can learn every slang term from South Island, New Zealand to Dallas, Texas to Liverpool, England…

This is of course not limited to English. Suppose you were to take a trip from Madrid, through Havana, south to Buenos Aires and then to Mexico City. Apart from the accents, dialects, etc., the differences in vocabulary you’d encounter would be astounding. As a small example of the variety that exists in the Spanish language, here are a few different ways to say the word ‘popcorn’ in Spanish.

• palomitas de maíz (most widespread)
• pochoclo parts of Argentina and Uruguay
• pororó parts of Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay
• pururú
• pororopo in Guatemala
• pipoca in Brasil, Bolivia, Portugal
• cotufas in Venezuela
• cabritas or palomitas Chile
• crispetas Colombia
• rositas de maíz Cuba
• rosetas de maíz Puerto Rico
• poporocho
• cancha or canchita
• cotumitas
• roscas
• gallitos
• cocaleca
• pajaretas
• crispetas or crispetes
• esquites
• bufes
• flores
• rosas
• tostones
• canguil
• ancua
• alepa
• millo

This is a brief tutorial that will get you started on the basics of Trados.

Source:

How to Get Started with Trados

In this video tutorial you’ll learn how to process xml, xdt or mdb files to create a termbase in Multiterm (Spanish).

Source:

How to Import xml xdt mdb in Multiterm